3D printing soft materials into tissue scaffolds

Conventional soft materials, with Young’s module < 1MPa, both hydrogels and silicone rubbers are swollen with solvent, hindering their ability to be formed or molded into structures after their synthesis. The fabrication of covalently bonded and swollen gels into structured mesoscopic composite architectures of dimensions from 10 to 1000 micrometer is a persistent and critical problem in medical research and in particular tissue engineering.

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Challenges

  1. Developing software for 3D-printing in suspended media.
  2. Investigate yield-stress materials and designer polymers for 3D fabrication.
  3. Test the degradability and strength of the 3D printed materials.